This book attempts to provide a broad and not too highly technical coverage of linguistic theory, both historically and in its current status. Although no particular viewpoint is espoused, a penchant for transformation generative grammar is apparent. The text discusses language as a means of communication, the physiology of articulation,…

This programed, self-instructional course has the following terminal objectives: (1) to present some notions of the science of linguistics and the major branches of linguistics, (2) to teach the segmental and suprasegmental phonemes of French, (3) to identify the major articulatory problems of French for the native speaker of English, (4) to…

This paper points out some linguistic and stylistic features of Black English as spoken by children and discusses the occurrence of particular language patterns. Examples of distinct intonation patterns, paralinguistic effects, language rhythm, and other phonological features are all considered. A statistical survey of particular age-group usage…

Examines the word-final, voiceless, stop-sibilant clusters formed by the attachment of -z morphemes to verbs and nouns in the speech production of Japanese learners of English. Reduction is the favored production strategy, but epenthesis is also used. Noun attachments are subject to less error than are verb attachments. (Author/LMO)

In a study of the detection of test item bias, Chinese speakers and Spanish speakers were administered a measure of pronunciation accuracy for the (d) and (z) morphemes. Six indices were calculated for each item: item difficulty, point biserial correlation coefficient, item variance, chi-square, Rasch logit of difficulty, and the average…

An experiment exploring the use of a single phonological variable in standard French by advanced American speakers of French who teach beginning college-level French classes is reported. Seven graduate instructors' use of the variable was examined in directed interviews with a native speaker and in the reading of sentences containing instances of…

This study is a detailed analysis of the phonological development of Sylvia, a bilingual child, in her acquisition of American English and Brazilian Portuguese from the age of 1 year, 7 months to 3 years, 8 months. The study is divided into four stages: ages 1.7 - 1.9; 1.9 - 2.1; 2.1 - 2.3; and 2.3 - 2.8. Up to the age of 1.9, the same…

This paper focuses on British English. Such rules as might be devised for specification of segment length would have to take into account, among other factors, the lenis/fortis nature of the segments at syllable margins, degree of stress, the relation between a given syllable and others in the same rhythm group, the same relations within the word,…

Human linguistic ability depends, in part, on the gradual evolution of man's supralaryngeal vocal tract. The anatomic basis of human speech production is the result of a long evolutionary process in which the Darwinian process of natural selection acted to retain mutations. For auditory perception, the listener operates in terms of the acoustic…

The ten papers in this collection are based on presentations given during a colloquium held November 14-15, 1969, at the University of Toronto. The papers, written in either English or French, cover various topics related to prosodic feature analysis in general; several concern the analysis of specific languages. General topics include discussions…

This paper reports on a study in which twenty young adults were tested for their ability to accurately reproduce the articulatory and prosodic features of three non-Indo-European languages in which they had received instruction. The first of two basic goals of this research was to test, at the purely phonetic level, the "critical period for…

Research reports on the nature of speech, instrumentation for the investigation of speech, and practical applications of research are included in this status report for the January 1 - March 31, 1979 period. The reports deal with the following topics: an articulatory synthesizer for perceptual research; the perception of an oral-nasal continuum…

The purpose of this study was to specify variables which function significantly in the racial identification and speech quality rating of Negro and white speakers by Negro and white listeners. Ninety-one adults served as subjects for the speech task; 86 of these subjects, 43 Negro and 43 white, provided the listener responses. Subjects were chosen…

This document, containing 15 articles and 2 abstracts, is a report on the current status and progress of speech research. The following topics are investigated: phonological fusion, phonetic prerequisites for first-language learning, auditory and phonetic levels of processing, auditory short-term memory in vowel perception, hemispheric…

Chorti, a Mayan language spoken in eastern Guatemala, is analyzed in this paper on the basis of a story text provided by an adult native speaker. A phonological description of Chorti is presented for background information; syllables, suprasegmentals, pause groups, articulation, and phonological rules are all considered. The author presents the…